Fiction – There will be Peace

Mother finally left today, never to return. It was not a decision she made on her own, it was more out of compulsion. For months, the strings that gradually pulled her away, held unto her, it wouldn’t let her go, gradually away from us it pulled, until, she was out of sight and gone forever.

I am not sad. I am not happy. I don’t know how I feel. Maybe I don’t feel anything at all. Is it possible that I can be neither happy nor sad?

There are no tears, there should be, but none, people are trooping in and out, in ones, in twos, in threes, they are patting me on the back, shaking their heads, saying ‘ndo’.*

There is a woman from church, she is repeatedly throwing herself on the floor, shaking her head and throwing herself again, every time holding her stomach and her chest like they would explode. She is Mama Chichi.  It is funny how Mama Chichi is mourning so loudly when she never really knew my mother anyway, she never replied when my mother said ‘hello’ or waved at her, she gave her the lifted nose look and sometimes stood up when Mother sat by her at church. I remember that one time Mother came home crying, she was certain she never wanted to return to church again because the women led by Mama Chichi had laughed at her when she wanted to join the meeting.

And then, there are the ones who have so many questions to ask. How did it happen? Was she sick? She is so young?

Father would stand shoulder squared out and reply their questions, ‘she died while we slept’, ‘No she was in good health’ and at the question of her being too young, he would look left then right, up at the ceiling, then down at the floor.

But in his words were truth and lie.

Mother was sick, she was sick for months. She started needing friends – every night while she read me stories in Igbo, she would sometime pause in the middle of the story to tell me of how she was so alone. “But you have Papa and I”, I would always reply, but how much wisdom did a 14 year old hold in her, mother would tell me  ‘you don’t  understand’.

She was different from the start. She walked like a man, briskly, swinging her hands like a pendulum  as she walked, shoulder sloughed a bit at the ends and feet moving simultaneously not the usual one before the other in a catwalk.

The people said she held no male in her womb, because she of herself was the male. They wondered how she had made Father love her. They said she was the man and he was the woman, except that he went out to work and provide food for the house. They said she decided how the money in the house was spent, whether father deserved a new shirt, whether he had worked hard enough for a piece of meat in his soup.

So, a year ago when Mother bore a male from her womb, the people came to see if it was true. They held him to their faces, parted his legs and peeked in between them, then they nodded their head in approval and looked at Mother saying “Congratulations”.

As the congratulations waned, it became clear that Mother wasn’t Mother. She didn’t smile like she used to, she wasn’t up early in the morning like she used to, she would sleep late into the morning and stay awake all night cleaning an already clean room. Father would beg her to drop the cleaning brush, to which she would reply “Germs! Germs everywhere!”

I knew there was something wrong, I knew this wasn’t Mother, but what I didn’t know was that I was going to return from school to find Mother holding her son in her hands beside his yellow plastic bath tub, still and cold.

“What happened?” I asked.

She would continue starring in space rocking the child front and back, while his naked skin showed no life.

I ran out the house to the lady under the huge umbrella where phone calls could be made and called my father; ‘Something is wrong with Mummy’, I would say between tears, ‘come home! Come home! Come home!’  I would refuse to go back to the house for fear of what I know I had already been confronted by, so I sit under the umbrella with the lady while I suppressed my tears.

Mother was taken to the hospital and for nine weeks she was away from home, Father would drive me down to see her every Sunday after church and we would talk to her about everything and anything. The first few weeks, she would ask about her son, to which Father would reply ‘He is fine’.

But he wasn’t fine, he wasn’t even there, he wasn’t her son anymore, she had no son. This she would be forced to live with for what was left of her life.

At first, I didn’t understand why Mother had done it, I sat under the umbrella as I waited for Father to return wondering “did she drown the boy? Why? Didn’t she always want a boy? Why?”

When Father returned, I followed him into the house where now sitting on a chair was Mother, her son wrapped in a shawl and singing an Igbo lullaby. Father took the boy from her, looked at him and asked “What have you done?”

‘He is so clean now’ she replied with a smile

‘Baby boy, show your father your clean armpit, show him your clean legs, show him your clean hand’

Father looked at her, confused, he held the boy in his arm, then rocked him side to side while walking away. He took him and laid him in his bed and returned to tell Mother ‘he has fallen asleep’.

What followed, was Father taking Mother into the car and myself and we driving the long way to the hospital.

Father would later sit with me and explain that the doctors had confirmed that Mother had suffered from something called ‘Postpartum psychosis’ and that it wasn’t her fault that my brother was no more and that more than ever Mother needed me to love her. I guess he couldn’t sit everyone around Mother and explain this to them and the need to love her.

So when Mother returned, he thought what she could benefit from was to be surrounded by godly people, but he was wrong. The more people that were aware that she once had a son and didn’t any more, the more she had to suffer.

I woke up today, to find Mother hanging off the ceiling, I didn’t scream, it felt like I expected, like I saw it coming. So I walked into Father’s room and woke him from his deep sleep.

“Please, help me get Mummy down” I said and began to leave the room.

He didn’t ask questions, he got up and brought a stool.

She had left a note:
I love you, I love you both. I always love you, I really do.
I can’t silence the voices in my head, I can’t take the pain away.
I seek ‘Peace’.

Peace.
Peace. She sought peace.

Thanks for reading,  please tell me what you think about this piece, your contribution would help improve my writing.  ‘Lovely’, ‘Nice’ are all wonderful comments,  but please also tell me why.

*’ndo’ is Igbo for ‘sorry’